Rugby: France, Scotland question ref objectivity

Never before have referees been under the kind of pressure they are now, with some Northern Hemisphere officials directly accused last week of skewing the outcome of Six Nations tests.

The World Cup is looming and coaches, particularly those in charge of Six Nations teams, are fraught and ready to lash out in defeat.

That's the nature of pressure; the reality when defeats mount and World Cup prospects begin to fade.

French coach Marc Lievremont, having explained before the game why the rest of the world hates the English, suggested after it that the referee, Irishman George Clancy, was unfairly harsh on the visiting team.

He made specific reference to the fact that England No 8 Nick Easter was not carded after deliberately handling in a ruck to foil a promising French attack.

"I have to ask myself," revealed Lievremont, "what would have been the referee's decision if a French player had killed the ball in a ruck five metres away from the posts?"

Perplexing the coach further was Clancy's handling of the scrum.

"You'll have to ask George Clancy because I didn't understand any of them," he said in reference to the three penalties against France at the set piece.

"I don't want to say it was a home-town referee, but it was almost like that," was the summation of French halfback Dimitri Yachvili.

Bearing in mind that France lost the game 17-9, all this could be the usual bleating of the vanquished.

The notoriously volatile French, having tried to wind the English up beforehand, were left enraged and bitter that their old enemy not only beat them, but are also beginning to play a lot more like France than France.

Yet it wasn't just the French who berated the referee last weekend.

Scotland coach Andy Robinson was just as cutting in his criticism of Welshman Nigel Owens. The Scots fell to their third straight defeat, losing 21-18 to Ireland at Murrayfield. Robinson's anger was mainly at the decision to sin-bin prop Allan Jacobsen shortly after halftime.

"What is disappointing is that there were no sin-bins for an Irish player," fumed Robinson.

"The penalty count was 13-4 [in favour of Scotland] and every time we got close to the line, they offended.

"Secondly, I was not happy with the scrum offence. We had two scrums going forward just after halftime and to sin-bin our prop was very frustrating."

At the core of the respective Celtic and Gallic griping was the belief that neither referee had been consistent at scrum time.

The match in Edinburgh was particularly badly handled and the statistics are unlikely to make easy reading for IRB referee boss Paddy O'Brien.

There was barely a scrum that didn't require resetting and one, in the middle of the first half, took almost four minutes to complete.

The endless collapsing in Edinburgh and the unexplained penalties in London, were in stark contrast to the games played across the Southern Hemisphere across the same weekend.

The uninitiated would have wondered why it was the games up there looked so different to the games down here. It's early to be complacent but the scrummaging in Super Rugby so far has been expertly handled by referees.

Even the Waratahs, one of the worst offenders at collapsing and mucking about during the engagement, got on with things. The game flowed and referee Bryce Lawrence will have done much to further his selection bid for the World Cup.

Many of his colleagues in the Southern Hemisphere will also be improving their standing, given the comparative control and authority that has been displayed in such a critical component of the game.

Before Super 15 kicked off, Sanzar referee boss Lyndon Bray said referees were all made aware they, as much as the players, were performing for World Cup selection.

The same message was no doubt given to the referees ahead of the Six Nations - but there now has to be some concern about how well some of the leading officials in the Northern Hemisphere are shaping up.

Not only have Owens and Clancy taken some heat, but so too has Frenchman Romain Poite. After Ireland defeated Italy in the opening weekend (but on the wrong end of a 13-5 penalty count), they considered lodging a formal complaint.

Most of the penalties had come at the scrum and the Irish were then left astonished that after the game Italian coach Nick Mallett alleged that Poite had in fact written to the Italian Federation after the corresponding fixture in 2010 to apologise for the way he had handled the engagement.

"I was made aware of the fact the referee had written to the Italian union to apologise for his handling of the game last year," said Irish coach Declan Kidney. "When I asked him, the referee informed me that was just the opposition coach trying to put the pressure on him. I'll look at the video and if we need to make an appropriate enquiry we will do so.

"Most of the penalties did seem to come at the scrum but we've been told there's an avenue for us to approach this."

The World Cup panel of referees has to include the best and, at the moment, some of the Northern Hemisphere officials are under intense pressure to make the cut.

There is another question to stem from that: what if such officials are selected, in a bid to even up the hemispherical numbers - and end up skewing the World Cup?